The AMD Execution Thread [2007 - 2017]

[Rufus]

I don't know why hector is so disliked by everybody. True he was in charge when conroe came out and when they screwed up with barcelona/phenom, but surely he deserves credit for Athlon(64) opteron and similiar suff before that too.

Sure, he deserves a lot of credit for the AMD64 success and beating Intel in just about every area for a few years. However that was 4 years ago, and what have they done in the past 4 years? Just about nothing, going from completely beating Intel to barely being competitive in the midrange and having no high-end.

 

[rpg.314]

However that was 4 years ago, and what have they done in the past 4 years? Just about nothing, going from completely beating Intel to barely being competitive in the midrange and having no high-end.

Agreed, but the conroe was a slam dunk. There wasn't much any one could have done about it. Overnight, they increased the perf by ~40% while cutting power by ~40%. After that decimation, admittedly, TLB bug should have been caught before release but still firing Hector won't fix it would it? Better products will and he had delivered better products before. Prior to AMD64 too, AMD was in doldrums.

 

[Accord1999]

Agreed, but the conroe was a slam dunk. There wasn't much any one could have done about it. Overnight, they increased the perf by ~40% while cutting power by ~40%. After that decimation, admittedly, TLB bug should have been caught before release but still firing Hector won't fix it would it? Better products will and he had delivered better products before. Prior to AMD64 too, AMD was in doldrums.

I think a lot of the hate for Hector comes from his over-sized and still increasing compensation during the post-Conroe period when AMD went back to losing money and it stock value collapsed and consequently started appearing on every list of the worst or most overpaid CEOs in America. I think he wouldn't be so badly remembered if he shared in some of the pain of the company, instead of being continually touted as the highest paid CEO in semiconductors after every terrible quarter.

 

[Davros]

If Humus was still there they could just fire him, that would make everyone happy

 

[willardjuice]

If Humus was still there they could just fire him, that would make everyone happy

Err what? Firing one of their most talented employees would make no one happy. I'm sure they were sad to see him go in the first place.

 

[3dilettante]

Maybe they'll beg to Mubadala's door again...

They kind of already have.
Abu Dhabi's interest in x86 is secondary, but as the primary fab customer, AMD could beg for help.
Unfortunately, they'd be in effect trying to reuse old coffee grounds, given how much they've diluted their stock, gutted their company, and toed the line on their x86 cross patent agreement to get what they have right now.

AMD will survive and BK might actually be good for them if they clean out all the Hector types in the company.

Any form of default is grounds to remove the cross patent agreement with Intel.
Without some rather unusual government directive that would basically mean the feds are dictating semiconductor manufacturing of US firms, AMD is all but worthless in that event.

Sure, he deserves a lot of credit for the AMD64 success and beating Intel in just about every area for a few years.

Not sure how much.
The groundwork of the Athlon and the bulk of the Opteron infrastructure were already done. Hector was recruited from the outside in 2000 for a chip that was demoed in 2002. He came in at the latter stages of a multi-year design cycle.

He probably had more influence in getting AMD into some previously unattainable OEMs, though at this point his free ride living off the benefits of design efforts done before his tenure ran out.

However that was 4 years ago, and what have they done in the past 4 years? Just about nothing, going from completely beating Intel to barely being competitive in the midrange and having no high-end.

This is more in keeping with the pattern established by Hector's job prior: head of the semiconductor division of Motorola (some disturbing parallels there).

 

[eastmen]

What do they have planed this year in the way of new products ? Surely a dx 11 gpu from ati but whats on the amd side? More under performing phenom 2s ?

 

[Kaotik]

What do they have planed this year in the way of new products ? Surely a dx 11 gpu from ati but whats on the amd side? More under performing phenom 2s ?

underperforming? they're doing quite fine when compared to similarily priced intel cpu's (namely core2quads)

 

[crystall]

Any form of default is grounds to remove the cross patent agreement with Intel.
Without some rather unusual government directive that would basically mean the feds are dictating semiconductor manufacturing of US firms, AMD is all but worthless in that event.

The whole semiconductor industry has always been heavily funded by governments (be them the US, various EU states, Taiwan and now even China and Russia) either directly or indirectly. Without public money the industry wouldn't be were it is now so I wouldn't be surprised if we'd see more of it.

 

[eastmen]

the highest end phenom 2 is only competiive with the old core 2s . The i7s destroy them. Also the higher end core 2s starting n the high $200 price range. So unless your looking for a budget price cpu amd isn't even in the offering and now they have engaded in a price war with intel. It wont be long till the higher price core 2 quads come down in price and squeeze out whatever remaining profit amd is making off the phenom2

 

[3dilettante]

The whole semiconductor industry has always been heavily funded by governments (be them the US, various EU states, Taiwan and now even China and Russia) either directly or indirectly. Without public money the industry wouldn't be were it is now so I wouldn't be surprised if we'd see more of it.

The event I was replying to was an AMD bankruptcy.
The US government wouldn't just have to fund AMD, it would have to assume some amount of control over both AMD and Intel to force their cross-licensing agreement to persist past a contractual point of termination.

 

[eastmen]

The event I was replying to was an AMD bankruptcy.
The US government wouldn't just have to fund AMD, it would have to assume some amount of control over both AMD and Intel to force their cross-licensing agreement to persist past a contractual point of termination.

i would think intel would pefer this rather than get into the mess that MS is in now.

Imagine not being able to intergrade a north bridge or something into their cpu cause its not fair to its compitors making NBs mean while its new smaller competition (ibm , nec or someone ) is able to get away with doing that.

Its like MS with Ie and Apple with safari . one doesn't get introuble for bundling and the other does.

 

[v_rr]

the highest end phenom 2 is only competiive with the old core 2s . The i7s destroy them. Also the higher end core 2s starting n the high $200 price range. So unless your looking for a budget price cpu amd isn't even in the offering and now they have engaded in a price war with intel. It wont be long till the higher price core 2 quads come down in price and squeeze out whatever remaining profit amd is making off the phenom2

Don´t get that. As far as I know AMD still have AM3 to launch. More precisely 6 new CPU´s in February. And Ph2 is competitive with high-end yorkfield processors Q9xxx.
Better then those only core i7.
And AM3 performance is still a secrete. AMD says 4% more performance with AM3.

You are talking about I7? i7 is <1% of the market. In 2007 95% of CPU where <150$ I think. There was a statistic around the web saying something like that. And with the crisis this won´t change a bit.

 

[3dilettante]

i would think intel would pefer this rather than get into the mess that MS is in now.

The mess MS is in is relatively minor as far as the US is concerned.
Intel's prospects aren't too bad on that front if it lets AMD implode and hopes for the best.

Imagine not being able to intergrade a north bridge or something into their cpu cause its not fair to its compitors making NBs mean while its new smaller competition (ibm , nec or someone ) is able to get away with doing that.

AMD didn't make Intel northbridges, so it didn't lose anything as a result of Intel integrating its own.

 

[Albuquerque]

And Ph2 is competitive with high-end yorkfield processors Q9xxx.

No, the 940 (highest end Ph2) is somewhat competitive with the Q9300, a cache-castrated lower-clocked economy Yorkfield. The Q9550 is today the same price as the Ph2 and has no problem beating it in pretty much every real application test available. And what about power consumption? The only thing Ph2 is competing against there is the old Kentsfields; Yorkfield completely dominates the power vs performance field in comparison to Ph2.

And AM3 performance is still a secrete. AMD says 4% more performance with AM3.

It's not a secret that 4% wouldn't get them on top, and we've yet to see where that 4% will actually come into play -- memory bandwidth? Floating point performance? Integer performance? What about power consumption? Since it's a new socket and new chipsets, do we even know what kind of stability to expect? Prior history of "new" AMD chipsets isn't always very rosy; Intel chipsets have far better starting stability IMO.

You are talking about I7? i7 is <1% of the market.

Well, that still gives it about 1% more than the Phenom 2 at this point, doesn't it? Let's be honest here, whatever i7's market share is right now, it's likely twice the size of Phenom's -- if not bigger. Let's elaborate a bit:

AMD's bread and butter in the recent past has been servers, high-end ones. I know that our organization has several massive AMD Opteron clusters for SQL databases because we needed good fast 64-bit horsepower. Guess what our new boxes are? Beckton. We're purposefully waiting so that we can get them in, and they will be our new platform going forward.

We're converting ALL of our massive SQL clusters to Beckton because they provide the horsepower we need for our ERP systems. In fact, they provide so much more power, that we're reducing our database clusters down to just four versus the seven we have now. So we'll be saving on power, on lease cost, and on complexity with the first three, and getting a big pile of redundancy with the fourth box.

This is where AMD is hurting. They can't compete with this kind of horsepower at any level, which is why we aren't using them in our replacement SQL clusters. And this is where they will get hurt the worst, because servers was where their margins were being made. Consumer desktop space is pretty low margin in the midrange; the TOP is where where the pure profit comes in. And without a top option? You're hosed.

 

[v_rr]

No, the 940 (highest end Ph2) is somewhat competitive with the Q9300, a cache-castrated lower-clocked economy Yorkfield. The Q9550 is today the same price as the Ph2 and has no problem beating it in pretty much every real application test available. And what about power consumption? The only thing Ph2 is competing against there is the old Kentsfields; Yorkfield completely dominates the power vs performance field in comparison to Ph2.

Many false info there.

1- Price:
AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb 3.0GHz
$235.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=phenom+940&x=0&y=0

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield 2.83GHz
$282.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=intel+q9550&x=0&y=0

today Phenom II 940 is 50$ less expensive.

2- Power Consuption: (@IDLE most important)

http://techreport.com/articles.x/16147/12

3- Performance:
Games:

Everything:

http://www.ixbt.com/cpu/amd-phenom-2-x4-940.shtml

I like the Planet3Dnow review. Its very fair and I really like the conclusions:
Deneb@3GHz(940BE) - 100%
Yorkfield@3GHz(Q9650) - 102.7%
Nahalem@3GHz(i7 940) - 125.3%
and the summary: best Price/Performance buy in the class .

And AM3 will improve this. May put things AM3=Yorkfield.

Prior history of "new" AMD chipsets isn't always very rosy; Intel chipsets have far better starting stability IMO.

AMD 7xx chip7 is award winning series by every websites and their IGP way better then Intel IGP. End of story.

This is where AMD is hurting. They can't compete with this kind of horsepower at any level, which is why we aren't using them in our replacement SQL clusters. And this is where they will get hurt the worst, because servers was where their margins were being made. Consumer desktop space is pretty low margin in the midrange; the TOP is where where the pure profit comes in. And without a top option? You're hosed.

Last time I checked AMD was on top of server market:
The Best Server CPUs Compared, Part 1

Closing Thoughts

Looking at the Server CPUs from the point of view of the market was surprising and refreshing. The whole problem with running every benchmark you can get your hands on is that it just gets confusing. Sure we can have 10 more benchmarks that can be categorized under "other", but if either the Xeon or Opteron wins them, would that give you a better view of the market? That is why we decided to focus on finally getting that Oracle and MCS benchmark right. That is also why we rely on the more reliable industry standard benchmarks to make our analysis complete.

Right now, it is clear that the latest AMD Opteron is in the lead. We are really at the pivotal moment in time. No matter how good the current Xeon "Harpertown" and "Dunnington" architectures are, they lose too many battles due to the platform they are running on. The FSB architecture is singing its swan song. Only a small part of the market, namely:

* The ERP people who don't care about power, but who need the highest performance at any cost
* The HPC people who have extremely intensive code which does not work on sparse matrices
* The people who render

…can ignore the shortcomings of the FSB-based platform.

For most other applications, the AMD platform is simply better in price/performance and performance/watt (see our previous Shanghai review). It won't last long though, as the performance that the new Nehalem architecture has shown in OLTP, ERP, and OLAP is simply amazing. Moreover, there is little doubt that the dual Xeon 5570 with 34GB/s of bandwidth (dual Opteron is 20-21GB/s) will shine in HPC too. AMD servers can use the HyperTransport 3.0 and higher clock speeds to counter this, but that is for a later article….

http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3484&p=1

---
Advise. Next time you want to say something search a litle bit before spread false information because you failed in every single thing you said

 

[JacktheHero]

And AM3 will improve this. May put things AM3=Yorkfield.

Very interesting assumption, considering your own data clearly demonstrates that PhII is basically slower than 65nm core 2 and cache castrated 45nm core 2 [clock for clock].
Hell will freeze over before PhII derivatives (e.g. AM3) get close to Nehalem in server performance and you should know that.
Other than that you are right, AMD is competing very well on price. But is competing on price enough? Or does it actually count as "execution doom and gloom", because they are still losing a load of money every quarter?

 

[v_rr]

Very interesting assumption, considering your own data clearly demonstrates that PhII is basically slower than 65nm core 2 and cache castrated 45nm core 2 [clock for clock].

I like the Planet3Dnow review. Its very fair and I really like the conclusions:
Deneb@3GHz(940BE) - 100%
Yorkfield@3GHz(Q9650) - 102.7%
Nahalem@3GHz(i7 940) - 125.3%
and the summary: best Price/Performance buy in the class .

2.7% diference clock for clock to 45nm Q9650 @3.0Ghz. AM3 should boost 4% performance, so I think they should be very equal.

Hell will freeze over before PhII derivatives (e.g. AM3) get close to Nehalem in server performance and you should know that.

Just read the conclusion of Anandtech. Everything is very well written on there.

Other than that you are right, AMD is competing very well on price. But is competing on price enough? Or does it actually count as "execution doom and gloom", because they are still losing a load of money every quarter?

That I don´t know and no one knows for sure. Only time will tell....
But this Phenom II is far better then Phenom I and Intel is taking it very serious. They have already drop prices by 60-40-20% and want to introduce new and cheaper quad-cores.
Intel response says it all about how serious this new Phenom are.
When AMD roll out in February 6 new AM3 cpu´s it will be the best compeling lineup that AMD have for years (since K8 times pre-conroe) that´s for sure.

 

[dizietsma]

xbitlabs reports that Intel are worried about actually making a profit next quarter. If Intel makes a loss it does make you worry what AMD will do financially.

 

[XMAN26]

underperforming? they're doing quite fine when compared to similarily priced intel cpu's (namely core2quads)

Sure, if you dont mind buying a product that only "competes" with a processor from 1.5-2yrs ago.